productivity

Apple Notes

by sirmews

Access and search your Apple Notes and iCloud Notes easily with this app. Manage your notes securely and efficiently.

Access and search local Apple Notes databases.

github stars

125

Read-only access (no editing or creation)Requires macOS Full Disk Access permissionLocal database access only

best for

  • / Finding forgotten notes and ideas
  • / Getting AI help with personal knowledge stored in Notes
  • / Cross-referencing information across your note collection

capabilities

  • / Retrieve all Apple Notes from local database
  • / Search through notes by content or title
  • / Read full content of specific notes
  • / Access notes metadata and organization

what it does

Connects Claude to your local Apple Notes database so it can read and search through your existing notes. Requires macOS and full disk access permissions.

about

Apple Notes is a community-built MCP server published by sirmews that provides AI assistants with tools and capabilities via the Model Context Protocol. Access and search your Apple Notes and iCloud Notes easily with this app. Manage your notes securely and efficiently. It is categorized under productivity.

how to install

You can install Apple Notes in your AI client of choice. Use the install panel on this page to get one-click setup for Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients. This server runs locally on your machine via the stdio transport.

license

MIT

Apple Notes is released under the MIT license. This is a permissive open-source license, meaning you can freely use, modify, and distribute the software.

readme

Apple Notes Model Context Protocol Server for Claude Desktop.

Read your local Apple Notes database and provide it to Claude Desktop.

Now Claude can search your most forgotten notes and know even more about you.

Noting could go wrong.

Components

Resources

The server implements the ability to read and write to your Apple Notes.

Tools

The server provides multiple prompts:

  • get-all-notes: Get all notes.
  • read-note: Get full content of a specific note.
  • search-notes: Search through notes.

Missing Features:

  • No handling of encrypted notes (ZISPASSWORDPROTECTED)
  • No support for pinned notes filtering
  • No handling of cloud sync status
  • Missing attachment content retrieval
  • No support for checklist status (ZHASCHECKLIST)
  • No ability to create or edit notes

Quickstart

Install the server

Recommend using uv to install the server locally for Claude.

uvx apple-notes-mcp

OR

uv pip install apple-notes-mcp

Add your config as described below.

Claude Desktop

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Note: You might need to use the direct path to uv. Use which uv to find the path.

Development/Unpublished Servers Configuration

"mcpServers": {
  "apple-notes-mcp": {
    "command": "uv",
    "args": [
      "--directory",
      "{project_dir}",
      "run",
      "apple-notes-mcp"
    ]
  }
}

Published Servers Configuration

"mcpServers": {
  "apple-notes-mcp": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "apple-notes-mcp"
    ]
  }
}

Mac OS Disk Permissions

You'll need to grant Full Disk Access to the server. This is because the Apple Notes sqlite database is nested deep in the MacOS file system.

I may look at an AppleScript solution in the future if this annoys me further or if I want to start adding/appending to Apple Notes.

Development

Building and Publishing

To prepare the package for distribution:

  1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:
uv sync
  1. Build package distributions:
uv build

This will create source and wheel distributions in the dist/ directory.

  1. Publish to PyPI:
uv publish

Note: You'll need to set PyPI credentials via environment variables or command flags:

  • Token: --token or UV_PUBLISH_TOKEN
  • Or username/password: --username/UV_PUBLISH_USERNAME and --password/UV_PUBLISH_PASSWORD

Debugging

Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging experience, we strongly recommend using the MCP Inspector.

You can launch the MCP Inspector via npm with this command:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory {project_dir} run apple-notes-mcp

Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Source Code

The source code is available on GitHub.

Contributing

Send your ideas and feedback to me on Bluesky or by opening an issue.

FAQ

What is the Apple Notes MCP server?
Apple Notes is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server profile on explainx.ai. MCP lets AI hosts (e.g. Claude Desktop, Cursor) call tools and resources through a standard interface; this page summarizes categories, install hints, and community ratings.
How do MCP servers relate to agent skills?
Skills are reusable instruction packages (often SKILL.md); MCP servers expose live capabilities. Teams frequently combine both—skills for workflows, MCP for APIs and data. See explainx.ai/skills and explainx.ai/mcp-servers for parallel directories.
How are reviews shown for Apple Notes?
This profile displays 10 aggregated ratings (sample rows for discoverability plus signed-in user reviews). Average score is about 4.5 out of 5—verify behavior in your own environment before production use.
MCP server reviews

Ratings

4.510 reviews
  • Shikha Mishra· Oct 10, 2024

    Apple Notes is among the better-indexed MCP projects we tried; the explainx.ai summary tracks the official description.

  • Piyush G· Sep 9, 2024

    We evaluated Apple Notes against two servers with overlapping tools; this profile had the clearer scope statement.

  • Chaitanya Patil· Aug 8, 2024

    Useful MCP listing: Apple Notes is the kind of server we cite when onboarding engineers to host + tool permissions.

  • Sakshi Patil· Jul 7, 2024

    Apple Notes reduced integration guesswork — categories and install configs on the listing matched the upstream repo.

  • Ganesh Mohane· Jun 6, 2024

    I recommend Apple Notes for teams standardizing on MCP; the explainx.ai page compares cleanly with sibling servers.

  • Oshnikdeep· May 5, 2024

    Strong directory entry: Apple Notes surfaces stars and publisher context so we could sanity-check maintenance before adopting.

  • Dhruvi Jain· Apr 4, 2024

    Apple Notes has been reliable for tool-calling workflows; the MCP profile page is a good permalink for internal docs.

  • Rahul Santra· Mar 3, 2024

    According to our notes, Apple Notes benefits from clear Model Context Protocol framing — fewer ambiguous “AI plugin” claims.

  • Pratham Ware· Feb 2, 2024

    We wired Apple Notes into a staging workspace; the listing’s GitHub and npm pointers saved time versus hunting across READMEs.

  • Yash Thakker· Jan 1, 2024

    Apple Notes is a well-scoped MCP server in the explainx.ai directory — install snippets and categories matched our Claude Code setup.